Jeffrey, the Ghost of Selma

Jeffrey is one of the most affectionately regarded ghosts in the American South. His story is inseparable from that of Kathryn Tucker Windham, the Selma-born writer, photographer, journalist and storyteller who was born in 1918, grew up in Thomasville, and died in Selma in 2011. Windham spent her life collecting Southern ghost stories, and she said her interest began with a ghost of her own. According to her and her daughter Dilcy, a presence moved into the family’s house in Selma in October 1966, around the time that mother and daughter were baking cookies together.

The first signs were noises. Dilcy Windham Hilley has said she heard unearthly sounds from the living room, which her mother attributed to a squirrel that had got into the fireplace. Then came the clumping of footsteps down the hallway in rooms later found empty, slamming doors, falling picture frames and furniture that had been rearranged, which Hilley has called “honest-to-God interior decorating.” A photograph taken one night when young visitors played with a Ouija board shows a dark, vaguely human blot, which has been presented as an image of the ghost. The family gave him a name – Jeffrey – and treated him less as a threat than as an unusual lodger; callers would ask if he was home, and the family joked that he was napping.

Windham made him the centerpiece of her first book of ghost stories, 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969), and she followed it with more collections. She told his story on public radio and at storytelling festivals for decades, and she never claimed to know who he was or why he had come. Her closing line is often quoted: everybody needs a ghost story, and if you do not have one, borrow Jeffrey.

Jeffrey’s fame outlived her. After Windham’s death, the family said that he was still thought to live in the house. In 2016 the city of Selma launched the Jeffrey the Ghost Project, which includes a downtown ghost walk, a folk-art sculpture by Charlie “Tin Man” Lucas that incorporates Windham’s old washing machine, and a bronze statue near the entrance to the Selma-Dallas County Public Library. The house itself remains a private family home. Visitors who want to meet Jeffrey should go to the statue or the ghost walk, not to the house.

Footsteps and clumping in empty hallways, slamming doors, falling picture frames, rearranged furniture and strange sounds in the living room, reported by Windham and her daughter; a shadowy blot on a Ouija-night photograph.

The hallways, living room and fireplace area of the Windham family’s house in Selma; it is a private home and not open to the public.

Jeffrey appears in Windham’s 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey (1969) and her later ghost collections. Windham wrote a song about him and told his story on NPR. Selma now celebrates him with a ghost walk, a sculpture and a statue.